Unbound (24 page)

Was she awake? Was this an invitation to warm the sheets, as she phrased it?

A sigh drifted up and only that. Then she shifted again, crawling closer. Burying her face in his lap, she curled up around him, a hand clutching his waistband. After long moments hearing only her soft breaths, he had to conclude she was asleep. He drew the sleep sack back over her. The rustle disappeared, leaving Romir to listen for night creatures as he waited for the ache in his loins to ease.

He tried to convince himself she only sought his heat, but the smile on her lips tempted him to dream a dangerous dream. He brushed the curls back from her cheeks for a better look at that smile. Impossible hope. It was only her sense of justice that made her want to free him, her soft heart pained by his circumstances. Surely that was all it was.

Morning came an
eternity later. Asrial spent the rest of the night wrapped around him. Whenever his arousal eased, she did something—rolled on his lap, pressed her face against him, petted him—that fanned the flames of desire anew.

But at least she looked rested, her cheeks pink, as she ate another of those detestable rations. If he were guaranteed that outcome each time, he would gladly face a thousand such nights.

They continued their exploration, Asrial persisting in her orderly assault of the archive. Romir made no objection, wanting to put off further comparisons with the Academe of his boyhood for as long as possible. But finally the last of the outer rooms proved unhelpful, leaving only the inner chambers.

Lights activated as they turned into a windowless corridor, warm yellow glows from recesses near the arched ceiling, a response to Asrial’s presence. Romir stopped when he realized he had left her behind at the turn. “What?”

Standing with her back to a wall, she pointed wordlessly to the ceiling, her eyes wide and wary, her other hand on the grip of her stunner.

Confused, he frowned at her.

“Why’d they go on? Did you do that?”

“No, they are like the gate in the wall. They detected your presence and responded.” His words seemed to drop into a quiet well, echoing in his ears with strange import.

Then the significance struck him. The weaves responded specifically to
Asrial
—without the intervention of a weaver. Just as the gate had opened to her presence.

Why had those long-departed weavers done that?

Romir tucked that question into the back of his mind to ponder on later. The longer they took to explore, the more nights Asrial would spend here. While she might not mind the privations, he intended to do everything in his power to avoid inflicting them on her. She had already sacrificed too much for his sake.

From memory, the windowless corridor gave access to the guarded inner sanctum—provided the original builders had remained true to their inspiration. “In my homeland, this would have been the Archive, the library of Daraya.”

More utilitarian walls lined the hallways, their plainness reminiscent of prisons. The rooms that should have contained tapestries and the smaller scrolls of weaver’s lore lay empty, bereft even of rotting threads, which could not have been—he could see preservation weaves lying latent on the walls.

Over and over, one question repeated itself in his mind: why?

Asrial walked beside him, her head in constant motion as she studied their stark surroundings. “You’d think there’d be more to find. Even the ruins in Maj had more relics.”

She was just as meticulous in her search of the inner rooms. Despite the absence of relics, the archive building was extensive, necessitating another night in Salima.

In the innermost chamber, Romir found the one fixture identical with the original in Daraya: a pedestal carved with stone lacework, its enamels still bright with color. It stood tall, unmarred by time, its design a shocking contrast to the earlier barrenness so that it seemed out of place. The sight made him uneasy for no reason he could fathom. Was this not more in line with what he expected?

“That is what we need.” He pointed to the waist-high pedestal and tried not to stare. It looked exactly like the one in memory; he had occasion to use the one in Daraya several times after he had attained his master’s sash. He took a deep breath to quiet the dread that fought to rise like a behemoth from the deep—a
kralka
, a mature one with long, venomous tentacles and multiple rows of serrate teeth.

“What does it do?”

“If you would set my badge here.” He tapped the cleverly disguised access niche on top, and his finger tingled at the contact as the interface sampled his essence. A live console, as he had expected.

Asrial darted a glance at him, then fumbled under her blouse with surprising awkwardness. He gave her his back to diminish her embarrassment, but the reminder that she wore his badge between her breasts eased his disquiet.

“Here,” she said gruffly, thrusting the badge at him.

With a feeling of unreality, he put it on the niche with the design side down. Though he tried not to dwell on those days, he had done something like this before—done it so often his body remembered the motions. Almost by habit, he laid his palm on top, and it locked into place with an audible
click
.

Power licked up. It read his badge, tasting the pattern of his blood and the binding to his essence. He triggered it, weaving power through both badge and niche in the set patterns he had learned with the awarding of his sash.

A soft hum came from the stone lacework as points of white light bloomed around his badge. The light pooled, color rippling in rainbow waves. Finally, it settled into the dark blue of saffir and spilled over, flowing along the stone lacework to limn out the glyph of a sixth skein master on all five sides of the pedestal.

The barren walls flared to life, portions of the stones glowing from within, golden words forming on the blank panels. Patterns in blue, red, green, black, and white formed and re-formed in silent, steady repetition beside the words.

Horror chilled his heart. Betrayed from within? After all the risks taken, the sacrifices made and lives lost? How could it have come to pass? He staggered back, shaking his head in denial.

“Romir?” Asrial’s hand on his back steadied him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Was this why Asrial’s people retained precious little knowledge of weaving? So little that djinn had been relegated to children’s tales?

 

 

Whatever the words
meant, they didn’t look promising. Romir’s reaction was like he’d been dealt a mortal blow. She might have looked much the same when the knowledge of her parents’ deaths had sunk in. He didn’t respond to her question, simply stared at the light script with haunted eyes while slowly shaking his head.

If he were a normal man, Asrial would have worried about him going into shock. But that was impossible in his case. Physically, anyway. Still, his frozen demeanor sent a chill through her.
Useless. Failure.
Old reproaches made familiar by repetition, but they still struck close to the bone. But now was no time for self-indulgent brooding.

Had she been wrong? Was
Promise
a reference to something else altogether? Was there actually no technique to free djinn?

Frigging crap, she hated all these questions and no answers. This was no time for doubts. She shouldn’t assume the worst just because of Romir’s reaction.

Ignoring the prickling of her arms, Asrial grabbed her comp from her belt and set it to record the text. She’d have to depend on the comp on the
Castel
for a translation. She couldn’t ask Romir to read it to her, not right now. That would be like throwing acid on a raw wound.

“Is there more?” She hated to ask, to disturb him in his pain, but they had only so many chances and limited time on Lomida. She couldn’t let it go to waste.

Romir responded to the question like a bot, moving only at her prompting. If he was reserved before, he was next to catatonic now. She worked quietly, out of respect for his distress, but her mind churned. What was so terrible that Romir shut down into himself like this?

It was the afternoon of their fourth day in Salima by the time she was willing to concede that there were no more secret messages to be found in that place. She’d recorded what she could. Now she had to get Romir away.

She retraced their route slowly, giving herself time to impress into memory what she could of Salima. This was probably her only chance to see the land of her ancestors.

All too soon, the wall came into view. The gate appeared as soon as the grav sled got within the sled’s length to the wall.

They emerged into chaos—lights, parked grav trucks piled high with equipment, so many people standing around as if they didn’t have anything better to do. The crowd erupted in voice, shouting and screaming like idiots.

“What the frigging crap—” Asrial swerved wildly, pulling up to avoid some expensive-looking electronics parked in the middle of the boulevard. The last thing she needed was some idiot filing a lien on the
Castel
to hide his stupidity who found a grounder judge to agree with him.

“Grounders!” She sped away, cursing under her breath.

“They are following.” Romir’s comment carried less emotion than the
Castel
’s comp, but at least he’d offered it of his own volition. For some reason the sound of his voice, even in monotone, slowed the racing of her heart.

She checked her screens. She hadn’t hit anything, but he was right. They were following her, several grav sleds taking to the air after her. They didn’t try to catch up with her, but they dogged her tail all the way back to the starport.

Luckily, that was as far as they went. Since nothing more came of the incident, she put it out of her mind.

Until the first vid message, some avatar wanting an interview with the
sraya
. Then another. And another. And another!

With a curse, Asrial blocked incoming communications.
Frigging crap
. All this attention simply because a Dilaryn visited Salima? When nothing happened when they left the
Castel
, she’d thought she was in the clear. She’d started to dismiss her worries as overreaction, to believe that knowledge of her Dilaryn heritage had faded from Lomidar memory, leaving her as just another ordinary Rim rat. But from the barrage of requests for interviews, it was clear that Amin wasn’t the only one who viewed her first as sovreine.

Asrial transferred
the record of the light text to the comp, working quietly in the hopes of not drawing Romir’s attention. After that brief chase back to the
Castel
, he’d lapsed into troubled silence. Whatever information the text contained had hit him like a stunner blast on full. She wanted to know what it was, wanted to understand Romir’s pain—and ease it if she could.

It would take a while for the comp to extract the text from the record. While the
Castel
’s comp was capable, it wasn’t as advanced as an archeologist’s research comp.

Asrial left the work cabin, then blinked at the silence that met her. They were on planet, so none of the usual hums and noises of a properly running ship could be heard. But Romir was nowhere to be seen, either.

The common room was empty, as was the galley. The hold was the same, her footsteps echoing hollowly with only supplies and the grav sled to fill the space. She called his name, but he didn’t answer.

She shook her head, denying the horrible possibility. His prison couldn’t have claimed him. It was on the ledge the whole time she’d been at the comp.

He was sitting on the floor of her cabin when she entered, the last place she expected to find him. His pose was similar to the first time she’d seen him on the floor, his arms a wall across his knees, except that this time his eyes were blank, as if he’d barricaded all emotion inside.

It hurt to see him that way.

They couldn’t stay here where he would be captive to his thoughts. She needed a distraction, something to break the grab net that message in Salima had cast over him.

“Let’s leave this for now.” Asrial pulled him to his feet, talking the whole time. “All we’ve seen for two decs is the interior of the
Castel
. We’re in no rush to get elsewhere, might was well save the supplies for later and eat something good.”

“But—”

“Salima doesn’t count.” Urging him out wasn’t just for his benefit. She did wonder if knowing the sacrifices Romir’s people had made to reach Lomida changed her perspective of Lomidari.